


We All Run Somewhere

by nice_girls_play



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Coming Out, Gay Teenager, Gen, Loneliness, M/M, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-24 12:48:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2581976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nice_girls_play/pseuds/nice_girls_play
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coming out is a part of growing up. It doesn't always happen the way you plan and, sometimes, the person who understands the most is the person you'd least suspect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. October, 1979

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is fiction. FICTION. I do not know these people and make no assumptions about any of them. This piece of fiction is also un-betaed. If there are any glaring inaccuracies, britpicks, or grammatical errors that need tidying, please let me know (note: consider protests of heterosexuality off the table, any queerness herein is creative license).

The mistake had been his.

Julian had a set routine at home: his mum had a habit of knocking twice before entering a room. He'd learned to listen for kitten heels on the stairs and in the hall, the small pause. Sometimes she cleared her throat before she knocked. She wasn't the kind of person to go through his things and Anya, the mother of three girls who came over twice a week to clear up, didn't believe in going over certain portions of a teenage boy's bedroom, so all of his private spaces, his bolt-holes, and dark corners remained uncompromised.

He had no set routine for the visits to New York, and this, in retrospect, was a huge mistake. 

It was why he was able to walk into the guest bedroom without caution, slightly winded from the walk up that last block to the Dakota, half a smile still on his face from the way Sean had burst in the door and immediately started tearing open the action figure he'd bought for him at the comic shop. (Wonder Girl. "She's the younger sister!" he'd said, grinning as he clutched the box in his small hands, impervious to the nonplussed look on the clerk’s face. American standards of masculinity were very strange.)

It was why he was able to catch the startled figure of his father, standing next to his almost newly made bed, a familiar dog eared paperback fallen open on the mattress. 

Years later, he would recall how innocuous the whole thing was. Most parents would not have recognized Christopher Isherwood or known the significance of it being under their child’s pillow, even bookmarked with an equally worn clipping from _Drummer_. 

Of course, John “I jammed with David Bowie and drank with Harry Nilsson!” Lennon was not most parents. And one look in his father’s eyes told him that he had understood the significance perfectly. 

His stomach dropped through the floor, cold dread filling the void. He turned and started walking, down the hall, out through the living room, front door in sight. A sweep of dark hair and tiny kinetic limbs bounced in his periphery. 

"Julian! Do you want to play?"

He kept walking. 

"Jules… Jules, wait! Jules!"

"Daddy, is Julian okay?" 

“Everything’s all right, Sean. Go visit with June for a bit, okay? I'll be right back.”

The front door slammed shut behind him. He walked and walked, breaking into a run as he reached the end of the hall.

He ran past the elevators and headed for the stairs, picking up speed with his descent, bypassing the front lobby entrance and exiting through the side door with an abrupt BANG. The winter air was cold in his lungs and he abruptly realized his coat was still draped across a chair in the living room.

It didn't matter. By the time he made it to the pavement outside the front of the complex, his father had already caught up to him. 

“Julian!”

He kept his face turned into the wind. His heart hammered wildly.

"Julian." He didn't know if it was the hand at his elbow or the gentle tone in his father’s voice, but the null state he’d settled into mid-flight suddenly exploded and he wheeled to face the taller man. 

"What?!"

"Where are you going?"

"The park." He cringed, waiting for an admonishment or, possibly, a crack about cottaging (possibly ‘tea rooms’ -- the American supplant, because God knew Dad was full of those these days). Truly, he hadn't actually known where he was going. He briefly wondered if he had kept staring forward, whether his feet might have just carried him home, ignoring the ocean altogether.

His father’s brow furrowed, puzzled. 

"It's that way,” he said, pointing in the opposite direction of which they’d been walking. 

"Oh."

"It’s getting too dark for it soon anyway," he held out the forgotten coat, rubbed his hands together. "Are you hungry?"

\--

The pizza place was two blocks away from the Dakota and every waiter in the place seemed to know them, smiling as his dad walked ahead of them and chose a booth at the back. 

The shorter waiter with dark hair produced a pair of menus and a basket of bread sticks without a word. "Thanks, Billy." 

"Is that macrobiotic?" he asked. He recalled the words ‘refined flour,’ ‘hidden sugars,’ and other terms he was pretty sure he’d seen written in his father’s handwriting, accompanied by a drawing or two. 

"A little variety's good for you. You can eat peppers, right?"

He nodded, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand, keeping his gaze firmly on the table. He watched as the menus disappeared from the checked tablecloth between them and was replaced with his book.

"I've heard a few things about this one," pale fingers tapped the front cover. "Any good?”

The book was on loan from Victor. His friend had read it to him between classes at school and during late night phone calls and now Julian was re-reading it on his own. He hadn't gotten very far on this trip – jumping between the initial chapters describing the boarding house, the pros, the Cosy Corner, early bits about W.H. Auden, later bits about Jean, the differences between the cloistered, closeted, academic world in England and free, robust Berlin nightlife. The bits he’d loved hearing in his friend’s voice were the ones he kept returning to over and over again. 

But he couldn't say any of _that_. 

“I like it so far,” he said, settling for the short, honest answer. 

“I read the last one -- the one about him and his guru. This one... looks more fun.”

It probably was. Julian hadn't read it, but Annie had. One of her favorite topics of conversation was about how eastern philosophy apparently left room to explore certain things western culture deemed inconvenient. He tried to focus on these conversations with her – he really did, but sometimes it was like trying to hold onto something slippery.

Billy the waiter reappeared and disappeared swiftly, leaving a basket of bread sticks and two pints of beer on the table. Julian gazed at his drink, amber and fizzing, looked up at his father who shrugged.

“Better for you than Coke, anyway. Don’t tell your mother.”

“I won’t.” He’d been allowed wine at her last wedding but somehow he didn't think she’d approve of him drinking with his father. Her face, lips tight and eyes wide in a mask of horror, flashed in his mind. No. Definitely not.

"It's all right, Jules. You know that, right?"

He nodded, swallowed the lump in his throat, kept his eyes averted even as his father dipped his head low, struggling to catch his gaze. He was suddenly fascinated by the table cloth, the wood paneling on the wall, the faded photographs of Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker framed above the table. 

"Have you talked with your mum? Or…your step-father?" 

Julian flinched, taking a long pull from his beer – watery, American lager, his nose wrinkled. The list of people he shared nothing with was quite long. John Twist was at the top of it. A beat. Then:

“You forgot his name, didn't you?”

“No!” The defensive denial was almost cartoonish. Julian felt a smile fighting to break out on his face. 

“It’s all right. You’re not the first.” No one seemed to recall that his mother had been married to anyone but John Lennon. It made meetings with the vicar and school administrators rather awkward.

"Right," he cleared his throat, continued softly. "Well, look. It is. It is all right. Okay?"

He nodded absently. “Sure, Dad.”

"Jules. Look, is it me? You can't possibly think I'd have a problem with this. Jules, your godfather was gay! Sean's godfather is gay!"

"I thought Elton was bisexual?” he blurted, surprise diverting his brain down another track entirely. He'd never met his father's friend, but _Rolling Stone_ and _NME_ couldn't both be wrong, could they?

His father shook his head, pulling a battered pack of cigarettes from his jacket, lighting one.

"He says he is. He'd like to be, probably. I think he's just... trying it on. Thinks it’s easier. Lots of gay people say they are at first."

He nodded, rubbing his eyes with one hand, abruptly tired. The smell of other people’s tobacco had a Pavlovian effect of making him instantly drowsy. 

"And if _you_ like both, that's all right, too. You know. That's fine," he said. "Do you? Like both? I mean..."

Julian shook his head, crossing his arms over his middle. The few others he knew in his class – one or two of them had come out and summarily thrown bisexuality at their loved ones like a life preserver; thinking it was easier -- holding out the false possibility of weddings and grandchildren, two-family flats, dinners on Sundays, a "normal" life. It was a mirage: ghastly and cheap and so very insulting to people who actually were into both and, subsequently, had to fight everyone just for the right to be left alone. No. Just _no_. 

It was odd, but Julian sensed none of this in his father’s line of questioning. There was no plea in his tone, no quest for normality in dark eyes behind darker glasses. Only inquiry and… 

"Have you got a boyfriend?” he asked, tapping his cigarette into the ash tray. “A best friend?"

Kinship.

The penny dropped.

Two thoughts simultaneously crashed in his brain: ‘which one?’ swiftly flattened by ‘which one do you _think_?’ A pair of dark eyes and darker hair flashed in his memory, warm arms made for cuddling, consoling; always lingering nearby – by his mother, by his father, by him – in case there was a song, in case there was a tantrum or a nightmare; in case he was needed. Obvious. _Shit_.

Julian wondered how badly it showed on his face -- his cheeks were burning, surely; felt underwhelmed as his father blithely kept on smoking, apparently oblivious to his distress. He was seriously beginning to wonder about the first person who had ever told John Lennon he was clever. They'd started a miserable and patently false trend.

"There's no one,” he said, returning to the original question. 

"Jules, if there --"

"There's no one!” he stopped short, realizing how loud his voice had become; dropped his gaze back down to the table, felt the anger wither and melancholy slip into its place. “I don't think there ever will be."  


Here was one more area where they were clearly different. It would never be both for him. 

He’d waited for it to be both; waited for the onset of puberty and butterflies in the stomach at the smell of perfume, soft handshakes, and shared glances with the girls in his class that never, ever arrived. Schoolyard affinities that had led him to draw fantastic images of his favorite "girl friends" doomed to an arena that pre-dated the end of his father's band, let alone his own coming of age. In their place lay an equally doomed sense of longing, masculine phantoms he could no more touch than he could pull clouds from the sky, forever out of reach.

His hand shook as he reached for his glass, abruptly setting it back down instead. Cold condensation clung to his fingers from the glass. He smoothed them over his forehead and back through his hair, once, twice, in a self-soothing gesture. 

When he finally looked up again, his father’s eyes were shining. Sad. 

"Jules. Everyone feels that at some point. You’re not always going to be lonely. It just seems that way. There's someone for you, there is."

"There's not.” The amount of time and effort he had put into just making the few friends that he had had been exhausting. Anything beyond that was like running a mile over hills and broken pavement only to come face to face with the steepest cliff – without a handhold, without anyone there to give him a lift up; insurmountable. “I don’t trust anybody. ‘Don’t know how."

"Okay. That's... fair. That's not unheard of, you know. A lot of people don't. And, you know, you’re right to be a bit cautious."

"Why? Because I'm the son of a Beatle?" 

It wasn't anything he hadn't heard before. ‘Be careful, son.’ Here be vultures. He had his father’s eyes, his nose, his low tenor vocal range and his name. There was no hiding in plain sight for him in any school, any record or book shop, any neighbor’s home, any impromptu jam session in the school yard or someone’s back garden. And everywhere he went, there were people (children and adults alike) waiting with inquisitive stares and rude questions. 

The worst ones were the people who managed to conceal their true intentions for a time – hooking and luring him in before unleashing the inevitable interrogation. He particularly treasured Annie and Victor after these encounters – Annie who only listened to Dusty Springfield and Elkie Brooks and Victor who liked the Clash and the Tom Robinson Band and thought all literature written after 1960 was shit; friends who were aware of the cultural zeitgeist but hovered perpetually outside and slightly to the left of it. 

He watched as his father stubbed out the remains of his cigarette in the glass ashtray. 

"No,” he said. “Because you're sixteen years old and men are bastards."

It was like a pin bursting a balloon. The statement was so broad, so uniform in its condemnation; it loosened something in his chest, allowing a giggle to escape. He slapped a hand over his mouth, eyes wide. 

“What? Gay men?”

“All men,” he asserted, a smile on his own face breaking through. 

“Musicians, too?” Julian asked. He couldn't resist – the drowsiness from the tobacco and the abrupt adrenaline drop after the build-up of the past hour conspiring to make him light-headed (and light-hearted). 

“ _All men_ ,” he declared. “While we’re at it, stay away from musicians.”

“All musicians? Singers, too? Songwriters? Producers?” Surely his father couldn't object to all music professionals across the board, not with his background. “What if I brought home… a cellist from a chamber orchestra?”

His father had the courtesy to look baffled for half a second before answering. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“Why?” It was childish, he knew, but he hadn't had many chances to play this game with his father over the years. He didn't look like he particularly appreciated it as he took a long pull from his beer. 

The song abruptly ended on the PA and a familiar overture of horns began. 

_'Yeah... come on, yeah...!"_

Julian recognized the tune first, watched as the realization dawned on his father's face, irritation and stern pensiveness giving way to surprise, recognition, then... fondness. His lips quirked slightly, morphing into a small smile that broadened as the chorus began. 

He froze as he realized Julian had noticed, glared a bit, caught out. He flicked out another cigarette from his pack.

“Drummers and guitarists are fine. No chamber orchestras, no singers, absolutely no bass players.”


	2. April, 1980

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coming out is a part of growing up. So is accepting the flaws of our parents. So is letting them know what's Not Acceptable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: This is fiction. FICTION. I do not know these people and make no assumptions about any of them. This piece of fiction is also un-betaed. If there are any glaring inaccuracies, britpicks, or grammatical errors that need tidying, please let me know (note: consider protests of heterosexuality off the table, any queerness herein is creative license).

The next trip to New York managed to be even stranger than the one before it.

The driver had met him at the airport – that wasn’t altogether strange, but usually his father was with him. The last year or so, he’d brought Sean along, graduating from the stroller to their dad’s shoulder and eventually to Julian’s. This time he was alone. It might have been the lateness of the hour, he thought. His flight had landed just shortly after 9 pm. Maybe Sean was already in bed -- and, as Julian had learned over the years, he didn't let himself be put down for bed by just anyone. As they closed in on the final block to the Dakota, he instructed him to pull around the side and ventured in through the side door, climbing the stairs to the correct floor on his own. 

The front door burst open before he could knock and he was nearly bowled over as a pair of small figures came tearing out. The blonde one gripped his arm. The dark-haired one (far too tall and far too heavy to be Sean) hugged him around the waist.

“Julian! Happy Birthday!” Before he could say a word, the owner of the voice was gone, chasing after the first figure down the hall and around the corner toward the elevators.

The elevator pinged in the distance and a third child suddenly came running around the corner. Sean, all squirelly limbs and high-pitched giggles, dove straight towards him and Julian dropped his bag so he could hoist his younger brother into a tight hug. Just behind him, was their father and another, taller, figure.

It was odd to see the two of them hovering together in the same space; a pair of magnetic poles, grounding energy while children flitted hither and thither, swimming and dancing chaotically in the surrounding space. He hadn't seen them in the same room for more than five years and he hadn't seen the second man at all in more than three. His father smiled at him -- the knowing, sly one that intimated that he had just pulled off something colossal.

"Surprise," he said. “We wanted to meet you downstairs, but we seem to have misjudged your trajectory.”

Julian braced a shoulder against the wall, willing himself not to fall over and take Sean down with him. He managed to just lean in when Paul McCartney reached down to hug him. 

"Hi Jules. Happy Birthday."

\--

There was something very surreal about the scene that Julian found himself watching play itself out. He had felt the fleeting petulance at losing the full focus of the weekend (and his father) evaporate the longer Sean clung to his shoulder, digging tiny heels into his waist to maintain purchase, and the longer Paul stuck to his side, hand on his shoulder, asking him about school and his life in England. He'd finally set his younger brother down only to watch as he toddled off to join the gaggle of McCartneys playing on Yoko's expensive carpet. 

There was amusement, heartened by the whispered announcement that his stepmother was on a business trip until Tuesday and the apparent absence of most of the household staff save June, the nanny, whom Sean made a great show of pulling into his games with Stella and James. Amusement and a strange ebullience that grew as he sat at the breakfast bar with Paul, watching his dad and Linda cook and carouse, snipes buried in giggles occasionally interrupted by an entreaty from Mary or Heather. 

Jet lag made him chatty and the giddiness in his stomach didn't help. It became painfully obvious the longer the conversation with Paul went on. He blew through several subjects at once -- school, music, traveling -- diverting into stream of consciousness tales about his classmates, about Annie and Victor, the concert the three of them had been too recently at the Red Rock Stadium, the weekend holiday he and Victor had taken to Dublin in February. 

"Sorry, who's Victor?" Paul’s voice was soft, inquisitive. 

"Ssst!" his father hissed, leaning over from the stove to pop up over Paul’s shoulder like Gollum. 

"What?"

“ _Ssst_!” he hissed a second time, whacking Paul’s arm with the spoon.

“ _What_?”

"He's got a boyfriend," he stage-whispered. 

"Oh!" Paul's eyes widened for half a second before settling back into their usual twinkle. "Is he nice?"

Julian felt his stomach drop. 

He’d told Uncle Paul. 

Of course he had told Uncle Paul. Because it was apparently too much to let Julian share that himself when and wherever he felt like it with whomever he felt like it. His previous feelings of irritation rekindled, fueled by white hot humiliation.

His father, per usual, hadn’t noticed. "'Don't know. I've never met him. When am I going to meet him, Jules?"

"You're not," he shot back. If his voice was sharp, if there was more than a hint of rebuke in his tone, his father didn’t notice that either.

"What? Not ever? That's going to be a bit of a trick. Boyfriends are notoriously hard to hide from nosy parents."

"He does have the benefit of some distance,” Paul offered. “Since when are you a nosy parent?"

His father scoffed. "Do you really think that'll stop me? I don’t know. Lately. I think Mimi’s catching. Is this what happens when you turn 40?"

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Yes,” Linda added, drizzling sliced tomatoes with vinegar and black pepper. 

"He's not my boyfriend," Julian interjected.

"It's all right if he is,” his father paused, still stirring the pasta. “He’s not a musician, is he? We talked about that.”

"He's not.” He wasn’t. He was a poet. And they had agreed that guitarists and drummers were fine, but in that moment, nothing else mattered but the denial that had seized every synapse in his brain. “He's my best friend! I am not dating my best friend!"

That last statement was shouted. The ensuing silence -- and the way something seemed to flash in Paul's eyes for half a second and then quickly disappear, like a camera shutter -- was more than a little awkward.

"Okay, calm down now,” his father finally said. “It's not like it's the law."

"It was when we were kids," Paul offered. 

"'Didn't stop us though, did it?" his father barely got the words out before breaking off into a peal of laughter.

Paul’s eyes shuttered again and then they were giggling, both of them. 

Julian had had enough. “I’m going to my room.” He pushed up and away from the breakfast bar, moving at a brisk pace through the living room and into the hallway. 

“What’s he going to do in there?” he heard his father ask, still laughing.

“Pretend you’re not his parents," Linda answered. "Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

For the first time in his life, Julian made a point of slamming his bedroom door. 

\--

He ended up eating dinner in his room, delivered by Sean -- who stayed to share it -- followed by a slice of birthday cake delivered by Stella, who also stayed. James eventually toddled in in search of his sister, then Mary and Heather in search of refuge from their fathers’ giggle fest that was apparently still going on in the living room. 

“Your dad’s weird,” Heather said, flipping through the channels on the tiny television, settling on an episode of _The Midnight Special_. 

“Your dad’s pretty,” he retorted. In for a penny, in for a pound and if they were going to be trading obvious facts, that was an easy place to start. 

The time difference and subsequent emotional crash combined with the semi-melodic strains of cheesy pop music eventually took their toll and he fell asleep sitting up against the headboard, the cake fork still in his hand. 

The sun had gone down and the room was dark by the time a soft tapping at the door woke him. The room was now empty save for himself and Sean. The clock on the bedside table flashed 3:40. He kept his gaze fixed on it even as the door creaked open. 

“Am I still in the dog house?” his father's voice entreated. 

Julian sighed, kept his eyes fixed on the clock even as the tiny lighted numbers formed burned shadows behind his eyelids. 

His father crept in quietly, sat down on the edge of the mattress, murmured a rushed “Sorry!” as he very nearly sat on Sean, who – being Sean, promptly rolled to the other side and went back to sleep, tiny face cradled on Julian’s hip. 

“It’s a regular slumber party in here.”

He didn’t answer, reaching down to stroke his younger brother’s hair instead. He smiled inwardly at the wet snuffle against the hem of his t-shirt. 

“I have been reliably informed that it’s not on to out someone without their permission. I’m sorry.”

He wanted to say ‘don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.’ Didn’t. One of the first things he’d ever learned was that his father was a wall of unmarked trigger spots, some of which would induce laughter, some of which would induce shouting. Either way, there was no sense in starting a row or otherwise loud commotion that would wake Sean and, possibly, the neighbors. 

And there had been an apology in that sentence. That was something new. 

“You had to tell him?” he asked instead. The words felt heavy on his tongue and the weight of their meaning settled in his chest. If he'd told Paul, who else had he told?

“I didn’t know it would upset you," his father managed to sound chastened with only a narrow edge of defensiveness. "If it helps, he’s the only one. No one else knows except the people you want to know. I won’t say a word.”

Until the next time he did or said something that pissed him off and made everything in his life fair game, Julian privately concluded. He blinked slowly, blocking out the prickles he felt at the corners of his eyes, turned his face back up toward the opposite wall.

“Jules," he said, his voice softer, almost beseeching. "I’m so proud of you. Do you know that? Don’t lock people out, okay? Not everyone’s a bastard like me.”

Julian blinked again, nodded slowly. Felt a traitorous tear break from the corner of his eye just as his father's hand moved into his hair. He crushed his eyes closed, fighting to keep more tears from slipping out as long fingers patted his hair, smoothing it out. They sat there like that in silence for a long time. He finally felt the mattress dip as his father stood up.

"We'll talk more tomorrow, yeah? It's off to bed with me."

"Are you actually going to sleep?" Fueled by surprise, the words blurted out before he could contain them. 

"I make no promises. Except to try. 'Night, Jules."

"Good night, Dad," he whispered, watching as the taller man's shadow slipped into the hall, shutting the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The presence of the McCartneys at the Dakota is somewhat creative license. John Lennon, never the most reliable narrator of his own story, placed Paul and Linda's final visit somewhere in 1976 while other sources have since placed them there at later points in time. The episode of _The Midnight Special_ Heather switches to would have been a repeat -- the show was on hiatus between February and May of 1980. The episode they're watching aired earlier that season and was hosted by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show with Rupert Holmes as the musical guest. I'm sure their fathers, had they known, would have been quite appalled. 
> 
> Note to parents: do not out your children. I repeat, Do. Not. Out. Your. Children. Not to family or close friends, not to anyone. It's more than bad form -- it's a violation of both privacy and trust.

**Author's Note:**

> The book Julian is reading is "Christopher and His Kind," Isherwood's memoir of his relationships in pre-war Berlin and his "owning up" to his history, unmasking the queer relationships implied in his previous work and their relation to his experiences. The song on the restaurant's PA is "Jet" by Paul McCartney and Wings.


End file.
